Wednesday, December 19, 2007

There is a big temptation to measure marketers by the number of leads they generate. Marketers tend to respond that they don't control the conversion process so the number of leads generated is meaningless.

IT Services marketers do need to prove that they have a revenue impact if marketing is not to be a fair-weather spend. There are some interesting ROI models that I have exploring recently, but they are time-intensive, expensive and based on assumptions which can be easily disputed.

I came across this easy to read 25-page ebook which provides a good approach on how marketing can align with sales. It does however, require deep structural changes in which sales and marketing are measured. For example, it requires sales to be measured (seriously!) on the number of leads they follow-up. And for marketing to be able to (accurately) track the volume of revenue generated from these leads. And for all this to be automated. Logically it seems really easy. Philosophically requires a mind-change! If anyone has implemented this methodology successfully in a $1bn+ company IT services do share your views.